


The City

by mako_lies (wingeddserpent)



Series: The Ruin [13]
Category: Final Fantasy XV
Genre: "One People" my ass, 1 Sentence Fiction, Ensemble Cast, Gen, Lestallum, World of Ruin, crimes against commas and semi-colons, world building, world of ruin Lestallum is a hot fucking mess
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2017-07-02
Updated: 2017-07-02
Packaged: 2018-11-21 20:45:05
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,945
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/11365302
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/wingeddserpent/pseuds/mako_lies
Summary: The City across ten years of Scourge. The taint doesn't come from without, but from within.





	The City

**Author's Note:**

> World building for a longer 'verse. Note: this was the first thing I wrote for the verse and a lots changed. So it's not _entirely_ canon for ruin verse, but a lot of the ideas I use for it get pulled from here. 
> 
> No focus on pairings, but mentions of Prompto/Aranea, Cor/Iris, and Ignis/Gladio. 
> 
> Mention of canonical disability, canonical anti-immigrant sentiment, mildly dubious consent (non graphic), Ardyn being Ardyn, and euthanasia.

**M. E. 756**

1\. _Motion_  

Dave’s call sends the people to Lestallum—regardless of nationality, occupation, belief—and they filter into the City as some Scourge-fearing soup, into the brightest of lights left to them; under the Exineris brights, they must become One People.

2\. _Cool_

One woman to another, still in her Exineris uniform: “Didn’t think the end of the world would be so stinkin’ hot.”

3\. _Young_

The Lestallum women give Sania a greenhouse in the outskirts, a place even the most-desperate of the Graleans won’t accept, and as the City builds itself to roiling, she studies their imminent demise; every experiment yields the same result: the Scourge prefers the young, but ultimately won’t discriminate.

4\. _Last_

While he never trained for the particular administrative nightmare that is the City, Ignis quickly finds his footing; yet, even as he helps orchestrate the best possible conditions for all, his time with the Crown yields him but one certainty, and that is that it can’t last.

5\. _Wrong_

Her brother moves further and further from her, even as he hunts and builds with the others, there is none of his gruff, grudging affection, none of his drive; it’s as though they’ve replaced Gladio with a machine that moves as purposefully, as soullessly, as any MT.

6\. _Gentle_

The rain, when it comes, is unusually gentle for the City; even Cor rushes out to feel it against his skin, only to realize that it is unfortunately, unsurprisingly as tainted as the rest and it slicks the streets with Scourge.

 

**M. E. 757**

7\. _One_

The first light goes out and panic hits the People (they’re all one people now, said Dave and hoped Noctis, and Prompto has to believe it, not simply for the code stamped on his wrist); still, it’s an easy enough fix, the Exineris ladies could do it in a second, but they’re too valuable to risk to the outskirts. 

8\. _Thousand_

It earns Prompto a reputation and immediately his life is eaten up by busted lights and cell phone towers and cars; still, if he can help in any way, if he can make Noctis’s vision of the future any realer, he will.

9\. _King_

The City seethes beneath its Mayor’s hands, and the order the Emperor tasked him create remains ever out of reach, as even his countrymen act against their own self interests in resisting him; what they and the women of this city refuse to understand is that order is order, whatever the source.

_10\. Learn_

Table: turn left, two steps from the stove; hall: right from the table and three steps; bedroom: to the left, four steps.

_11\. Blur_

The fire devours and the cry goes up from the crowd, “No Empire, no Mayor, no Niffs,” and Gladio’s fingers slip from Ignis’s in the time it takes to blink, then they’re separated, lost in the crowd as the Mayor’s gates are flung open wide under the bright Exineris lights.

_12\. Wait_

The smoke chokes him so familiar and intimate, the same as it tasted in Altissia more than a year ago, so Ignis clings to the alley wall and waits for Gladio to find him, just as he did then.

_13\. Change_

Within weeks, walls across the City are improved with: “GO HOME NIFFS.”

 

**M. E. 758**

_14\. Command_

Leaderless, the City drifts into bloc-states organized by old nationality; Gladio presses his thumbs into the knots between Ignis’s shoulder blades as he reads yet another manifesto outlining why the Niff bloc should be removed.

_15\. Hold_

Prompto knows, he _knows_ , that Noct wants the three of them to stick it out together, make the people see coming together is the only way, but it’s too difficult to watch the City fracture with the weight of old history, cling to Gladio and Ignis, _and_ hold his grief; he sets out from the Niff bloc without calling them goodbye.

_16\. Need_

Aranea leans against the wall of the Accordo bloc: “look, lady, either you need this dirty Niff’s help or you don’t, quit wasting my time.”

 

**M. E. 759**

_17\. Vision_

Gladio who clings most desperately to hope with his particular brand of pushy and pointed optimism; Gladio who weeps most bitterly at Ignis’s words: “I’m afraid it is indeed permanent.”

_18\. Attention_

Kid is the embodiment of that “all attention is good attention” thing; Prompto cries the whole time Aranea takes him in the alley, his bare back half-obscuring the red NIFF—his crying isn’t exactly a turn-on, but hey, she’s a giver.

_19\. Soul_

In the outskirts, they used to plant irises over the graves of dead women, so that Messenger Iris could lead their souls to the Beyond.

 _20._ _Picture_

Frozen in Iris’s memory: the woman’s Scourge-sick blood, black over the curve of her knife.

 

**M. E. 760**

_21\. Fool_

Dave stands in the ravaged city-center, the Lestallum/Lucian bloc, ambling with men; they take up the old cry, “Lestallum for Lucians—no Niff daemons!”

_22\. Mad_

It’s Iris and Cor that suggest the hunters move to Hammerhead; they give Dave logic, but he agrees for spite.

_23\. Child_

Talcott waits for Prompto outside the Niff bloc for hours, lining up his statues again and again; no other children come out to play with a Lucian, and Prompto never emerges.

_24\. Now_

The fifth rejected treaty between the blocs has Ignis throws his old, expensive pens across the room—“I’m half-tempted to let the City destroy itself, if humanity cannot come together now, of all times, what good are we?”

_25\. Shadow_

The call comes during a huge surge in daemon activity, when all the hunters are already occupied—Cor can find no other, so it is Iris he brings to liberate Insomnia, Iris who has blossomed the brightest in this ruin.

 

**M. E. 761**

_26\. Goodbye_

Cindy grins at her Paw-Paw; the City is bright and very city-like—no Hammerhead by any stretch—“I guess this here’s goodbye then,” she says and pretends not to notice the tears in his whiskers, like she does most days.

_27\. Hide_

Sania nearly tans Gladio’s hide, but she still gets him that antidote—and if her touch lingers to see he’s whole and hale, well, he’s a smart enough lad to enjoy the attention.

_28\. Fortune_

Frost-kissed, she brings Prompto to the City, her chill has healed the wounds of flesh, but the Accursed’s touch runs deeper than mere skin; Gentiana spreads him as an offering before the lights.

_29\. Safe_

The rumor starts up in the Accordo bloc: “Did you hear about the hag outside—I hear she pours these potions down the walls—what is she, loony?”

 

**M. E. 762**

_30\. Ghost_

An hour in the City, and Gladio thinks he can maybe still hear Ardyn’s lilt in his ear.

_31\. Book_

Iris and Cor comb the Tombs; but it’s Talcott, voice puberty-cracked, who reads to Ignis; he reads all the records and accounts of the First King, of the Healer, and those that came before and after; perhaps in history there is a future.

_32\. Eye_

Those unspoken promises he’d made, to himself, to his king, to his friends—those should have been the last he’d abandoned, yet—Gladio hasn’t even _seen_ Prompto, let alone protected him.

_33\. Never_

The men and women of Lestallum, those who had lived the City, had sworn they’d never take another man for power again—yet it is the old-blooded Insomnia chamberlain the blocs accept leadership from; and again a man who heads the City.

_34\. Sing_

Prompto has to sing Ignis’s praises in the Niff bloc, an impassioned, “please try not to make his life too hard, if you let him, he’ll help you,” but what trust have they for a Niff who betrayed them even before his first taste of war?

_35\. Sudden_

A woman to appease the Lestallumers, a Niff to appease the Niffs—unease from the rest, but Ignis is human enough that he takes aid where he can; Aranea is a choice, if not the perfect choice, for vice-mayor: now he merely has to beg her.

_36\. Stop_

Still, the bloc in-fighting lingers, but it’s Aranea that suggests idle people are scared and irritated people—there are many, many projects that stagnated under the City’s fractured foundation.

 

**M. E. 763**

_37\. Time_  
****

Months before Aranea and Ignis eviscerate the bloc system with all the finesse of morticians, it’s the Tenebrae bloc leaders who suggest that, instead of unsustainable and unlikely efforts at repopulation, time is best spent bearing witness; in Tenebrae, the Grand Historian had nearly the esteem of the Oracle, so it is they, now, who record the end of days; if there is anyone left to forget, it _cannot_ be forgotten.

_38\. Wash_

Sania scrubs the Scourge from her skin with the still-clear water—though the Meteor yet provides power, it is the water she fears for.

 _39\. Torn_  

When Prompto returns to the City, the old system is gutted, still not Noctis’s One People dream, but they’re closer; he picks anxiously at his raw mark, it’s stupid, he knows it’s stupid, but he now, he can’t figure where he belongs.

_40\. History_

Monica manages to set foot in the City on errand for the hunters, only to find that Ignis has left it to Aranea’s care—“He’s gone to the Tombs,” she tells Monica, “looking for history—should’ve been born in Tenebrae.”

_41\. Power_

Ardyn the Healer comes to the Lestallum and claims Friend—“Had you merely said yes,” he traces over and over the shape Ignis’s trembling mouth, “I would have healed you—so, as ever, it is your _pride_ that blinds you.”

 

**M. E. 764**

_42\. Bother_  
****

Iris sits in her brothers chair, eyebrows lifted as Gladio limps his way in from the hunt; he grimaces immediately—“Oh, so now that you have to see me, I bother you?”

_43\. God_

Gentiana runs cold fingers over the smashed idol, carved crudely in Noctis’s countenance—“he isn’t your stupid God—“ the Shield had half snarled before he broke their worship; a kind thought, on the part of the worshippers, to afford the King more power than that prescribed for him.

_44\. Wall_

Cid thinks if they can last another few years, that the walls between people might finally fall; but it’s likely too little too late.

 

**M. E. 765**

_45\. Naked_

Cor wraps his hand over Prompto’s bare brand, hard enough it might bruise, “So you’ve stopped hiding, after all these years,” like he’d known all along, but how?

_46\. Drive_

Half-asleep in their little room beside her brother’s, Iris proclaims into Cor’s bare shoulder, “If Noct—if Noct can’t beat him, it’s your duty, as an Immortal, to make Ardyn’s eternity hell.”

_47\. Harm_

Gladio feigns casual, leaning against Iggy’s desk, a farce Ignis can’t even appreciate—“What’s the harm in spending a day with me?”

 

**M. E. 766**

_48\. Precious_

“I agree—life is precious, Aranea,” Ignis’s tone is flat, “but can we truly risk anyone to rescue of Tenebrae?”

_49\. Hunger_

Iris pours Sania the last of the red wine—it was her father’s favorite, he’d let her have her first sip of it on her tenth birthday—now that it’s gone, she doesn’t know where to find it again, but Astrals, what she’d give to find more.

_50\. Believe_

Prompto still believes, or at least he thinks he does, in the sun, in being One People, in the future, in _Noctis_ —someday soon the Scourge will be over and they can get busy living Noctis’s future.


End file.
